The 2nd International Biennial Exhibition of Fine Art & Documentary Photography in Buenos Aires

Written by Alice Gundersson Saturday, 28 January 2012 22:05

Buenos Aires, Argentina.- The Borges Cultural Centre is currently hosting the second International Biennial Exhibition of Fine Art and Documentary Photography on view through February 27th. 320 images taken by 220 artists from 40 countries are being exhibited at the Centro Cultural Borges where this year The International Biennial of Art and Documentary Photography is being held. The works will be auctioned on February 14 benefiting FLENI foundation and Save the Children.The Pollux Award and The Jacob Riis Award organized by The Worldwide Photography Awards Gala and among them are the awards in several competitions. Images were selected by a jurors tem which included several well-known photographers such as Magnum’s Chris Steele-Perkins, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Olivia Arthur; publishers from  Eyemazing, Zoom and Lenswork; and the curators Philip Brookman and Carol McCusker, among others.

“There’s everything. This is a great opportunity to see something that is not common in Buenos Aires, and it’s perhaps the largest photographic Biennial in Latin America in the last years” said photographer Julio Hardy, CEO of The Worldwide Photography Awards Gala, based in UK and organizer of the Biennial. Diversity is not only in the countries of origin of the participating artists, Egypt, Lebanon, Poland, Iran, Senegal, Iraq and the U.S., among others, but also the styles and themes addressed. Photographs were selected from 17,000 images submitted to The Julia Margaret Cameron Award for women photographers.


About 200 of the exhibits are of women artists. “There is a growing participation of women in fine art and documentary photography,” said Hardy, who then noted the difference: “In the photograph taken by women there’s a more humanistic approach. For example, in the Biennial exhibited photos of women show the aftermath or the consequences of a conflict rather than the conflict, “he said. The photographs donated by the artists will be auctioned at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA) on 14 February, however the exhibition which runs until the 27th of that month. Proceeds from the auction, which will be conducted by Enrique Scheinsohn, will be allocated equally to the FLENI Foundation and Save the Children. The image of Israeli artist Dina Bova, published on the cover of the catalog, you will leave the ring with a base of $ 2500. This is a version of the expulsion from paradise of Adam and Eve. The first Biennale was held in 2010 at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, with the exhibition of 160 works from 25 countries. For this occasion, the initiative has been declared of cultural interest by the Ministry of Culture of the Nation and is sponsored by the embassies of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Peru, Denmark, Poland and Finland. Visit the Gala Awards website at ... http://www.thegalaawards.net


Located in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, the Borges Cultural Center is an important cultural undertaking created by the Foundation for the Arts (Fundación para las Artes) a non-profit organization.The center was established in October of 1995. Occupying a space of over 10,000 square meters, the Borges is located within Galerías Pacifico—a prestigious building dating back to the end of the 19th century and considered a historical national monument in Argentina. The goal of the Borges Cultural Center is to support and promote cultural and artistic expression, advance education in its areas of interest, and to promote Argentina’s historical, cultural, and artistic heritage both domestically and abroad. Visitors can enjoy a wide array of cultural activities, such as art exhibits, music, dance, films, theatre, literature, and various educational programs. Following the example of the Bom Marché in Paris, Francisco Seeber and Emilio Bunge created the Argentine Bom Marché Argentino at the end of the last century. Their European-styled creation embodied the best of the period’s architectural trends. Florida Street was chosen as the optimal location in which to construct this exceptional building of glass arches, inter-crossing paths, and an elegant central dome. On December 25, 1896, the Fine Arts Museum was established inside the Galerías Pacífico building. As is sometimes the case with large-scale projects, the building suffered the impact of several historical events that took place in Argentina during its construction. In 1908, circumstances forced part of the structure to be sold to the Buenos Aires railway system. In 1945, architects Jorge Aslan and Héctor Ezcurra remodelled the building according to this partition, dividing the space between the gallery/stores, and the administrative offices for the railway company employees. The inclusion of mural paintings by Spilimbergo, Berni, Castagnino, Colmeiro and Urruchua capped off the building’s restoration, and added colour and life to the 450 square meter dome. The Center has previously hosted exhibits of well-known international artists including: Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Giorgio de Chirico, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Torres García, Man Ray, Robert Capa, World Press Photo, Steve McCurry and many others.

The Tampa Museum of Art features Romare Bearden ~ Southern Recollections

Written by Frazer Coolidge Saturday, 28 January 2012 22:44

TAMPA, FL -  The Tampa Museum of Art is pleased to present Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections, an exhibition of approximately 80 works of art that span the career of this internationally renowned artist. Bearden (1911-1988) is widely regarded as one of the most important African-American artists who worked in the United States during the 20th century. He has been the focus of many solo exhibitions, including presentations at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. In 1987 he was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President Ronald Reagan. Works assembled from public and private collections will highlight Bearden’s mastery of collage as well as his development of narrative and thematic explorations of his native South. This exhibition, which will be on view in Charlotte and Newark during its national tour, coincides with the centennial of Bearden’s birth and will examine how the South served as a source of inspiration throughout his career (a theme that has not been previously explored). On view 28th January until 6th of May.

Through visual recollections of his experiences in the South, Romare Bearden meticulously recorded the ritual forms, or the “collective beliefs,” that imbue his works with archetypal significance. These visual metaphors hold in perfect balance the literal and the symbolic; with them he celebrated and eulogized a lost way of life and the feelings and values associated with the past. Among the large thematic groupings will be selections from The Prevalence of Ritual series, which includes many works referring to Bearden’s childhood home in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Bearden spent many summers during his childhood with his paternal grandmother and great grandparents in Mecklenburg County, and absorbed stories and observations about the rituals of daily life—the relentless toil of cultivating crops, formidable women tending lush gardens and mixing herbal remedies, blue wash day Mondays, Friday night fish fries, Saturday night revival meetings, and church-going Sundays. These experiences, which stood in stark contrast to the urban rhythm of his parents’ New York City household, left an indelible impression on him.


In the early 1940s, Bearden began giving visual form to his boyhood memories. The works in his Southern Series, painted in tempera on brown paper, are characterized by strong colors, flattened perspective and stylized, highly formal compositions. Paintings such as Folk Musicians (1942) and The Visitation (1941) are examples of Bearden’s depictions of agrarian life, as well as his portrayal of emotional bonds common to all humanity, but particularly informed by an African-American experience.

As Bearden developed his collage technique in the mid-1960s, he made use of a wide ranges of art practices, both Western and non-Western. His studies of masters of European, African, and Classical Chinese art enabled him to draw on styles that he felt were timeless and historically durable. The fragmented images Bearden gleaned from magazines and arranged as a whole are as much a part of the content of his compositions as are the events and people depicted. His use of collage, which emphasizes distortions, reversals, telescoping of time, and Surrealistic blending of styles enabled Bearden to convey the dream-like quality of memory and active imagination and was therefore a perfect vehicle for images of his memories of the South.


Bearden returned to the South in the 1970s as his career was beginning to gain momentum. This homecoming in his late mid-life proved bittersweet. The region was undergoing urban renewal, and already traces of Bearden’s past had been erased. Perhaps this nostalgic experience imbued Bearden with a greater sense of urgency to both celebrate and eulogize a lost way of life, a theme that would inform his artwork for the remainder of his days. Bearden developed a complex iconography that spoke to these developments.

Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections is supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and was organized by The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Presentation of the exhibition in Tampa is made possible with generous support from the Arts Council of Hillsborough. Additional support was provided by Hazel and William Hough and the Tom and Mary James Foundation. Visit :  http://www.tampamuseum.org/

Turner Contemporary shows how JMW Turner revolutionized Landscape Painting

Written by Norman Blackwell Saturday, 28 January 2012 22:07

MARGATE, UK - Eighty-eight works by Britain’s best-loved painter, JMW Turner , many from Tate’s collection, will go on show in the major exhibition Turner and the Elements at Turner Contemporary in Margate from 28th January –13th May. The exhibition, including a number of works featuring Margate and the north Kent coast, illustrates how his painting technique and the influence of the latest scientific and technological developments of his time, revolutionized landscape painting. JMW Turner was a frequent visitor to Margate spending time there as a child and again later in his life. He is said to have remarked to John Ruskin that “the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe”.

Read more: [[Turner Contemporary shows how JMW Turner revolutionized Landscape Painting]]

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Written by Editor, Art Knowledge News Friday, 27 January 2012 20:39

This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here .

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Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921 ~ Reinventing Tradition at the National Gallery of Art

Written by Bryant Richadson Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:09

WASHINGTON, DC.- Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was the greatest draftsman of the 20th century, exploring every technique from a single line to explosions of color. Through some 60 works, Picasso's Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition presents the dazzling development of the artist as a draftsman during the first 30 years of his career, from the precocious academic exercises of his youth to his radical innovations of cubism and collage. On view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from January 29th through May 6th, the exhibition includes many of Picasso's finest drawings, watercolors, and pastels, borrowed from American and European public and private collections—including the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte—and seven drawings from the Gallery's collection of 278 works by Picasso.

"Drawing served as an essential means of invention and discovery in Picasso's multifaceted art, connecting him with the European masters of the near and distant past," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "Picasso's work has long been integral to the Gallery's collection and has been the subject of six important exhibitions here, but this is the first to focus on his major drawings, watercolors, pastels, and collages."

Picasso's Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition presents a diverse selection of works on paper arranged chronologically, from early academic studies and life drawings to preparatory drawings for paintings, major independent and finished drawings made for sale, and portraits of family and friends in all media.

The son of a drawing instructor, Picasso began to sketch at an early age. The exhibition opens with a selection of the most accomplished drawings from his childhood, including Hercules (1890)—his earliest known drawing. By age 14, he had mastered the conventions of classical draftsmanship through intense academic study and hard work, exemplified in Study of a Torso (1895) and Study from Life (1895–1897). The lessons learned in this period, as well as exposure to the art academies of La Coruña, Barcelona, and Madrid, and to old masters in the Prado, stayed with Picasso throughout his life.

Picasso's move to Paris in 1904 coincided with rising public access to works on paper by old master and 19th-century artists through museum exhibitions and new means of reproduction. Inspired by Ingres, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and Degas, as well as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities, Picasso produced virtuoso drawings as independent works in a variety of materials (pen and ink, charcoal, pastel, watercolor, and gouache) and subjects (the couple, mother and child, and the harlequin family), for example Juggler with Still Life (1905).

The exhibition showcases the way in which Picasso (with Georges Braque) devised new approaches in drawing that culminated in cubism and collage—the most critical development in his career and arguably in the 20th century. His interest in ancient Iberian art led to geometric stylization in visions of his mistress Fernande Olivier. In studies of individual figures, such as Yellow Nude (Study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) (1907), he revealed his thought processes as he progressively rendered the human figure more abstract. Watercolors of landscapes and still lifes as well as figures track Picasso's development of the interlocking facets that underlay cubism. Six major variations on a standing female nude explore his analytic vocabulary. Another series shows the artist's brilliant transformation of the new medium of collage into major artistic statements. In the collage The Cup of Coffee (1913), Picasso created a dialogue between conventional means of drawing and unconventional materials and techniques, and between virtual flatness and illusion of depth.


During World War I and immediately following, Picasso balanced tradition against innovation, embracing both classical modes and the cubist approach to representation. In portraits and images of bathers and figures, the artist rendered his subjects in spare contour drawings—for example, The Bathers (1918)—and in carefully executed sculptural drawings of the face and body, as in Portrait of Madame Georges Wildenstein (1918).

The concluding works in the exhibition are from the summer of 1921, when Picasso and his wife Olga Khokhlova and baby Paulo were staying at Fontainebleau. Head of a Woman and Woman in a Hat Holding a Missal are pastel and charcoal renderings of monumental female figures, reflecting Picasso's deep interest in the classical Mediterranean tradition.

The curators of the exhibition are Susan Grace Galassi, senior curator, The Frick Collection; Marilyn McCully, an independent scholar and Picasso expert; and Andrew Robison, senior curator of prints and drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Visit : http://www.nga.gov/

The Fondation Beyeler Presents a Major Retrospective of Pierre Bonnard

Written by Luigi Balzaretti Friday, 27 January 2012 21:08

Basel, Switzerland.- The Fondation Beyeler is pleased to present "Pierre Bonnard", on view from January 29th through May 13th. With the exhibition “Pierre Bonnard”, the Fondation Beyeler celebrates one of the most fascinating of modern artists. With more than 60 paintings by the renowned French colorist on loan frominternational museums and private collections, the show provides a fresh review of Bonnard's oeuvre and development. It covers his entire career from his beginnings with the Nabis through Symbolism and Impressionism to his ever more colorful and abstract late works. The paintings depict familiar scenes with bathers, views of the artist's garden, everyday life, and the bustle of the Paris streets.

Born in Fontenay aux Roses near Paris, Bonnard (1867–1947) worked principally in his private residences and studio apartments in Paris. The main locations were his house "Ma Roulette" in Vernnonet, Normandy (1912-39), and the villa "Le Bosquet" in Le Cannet on the Côte d'Azur (1927-47) and their respective gardens. In these personal surroundings Bonnard found the scenes and inspirations for his compositions in color as well as his preferred subjects, to which he remained faithful throughout his life while varying them in different ways. Marthe, his lover and, from 1925, his wife, was his favorite model. The wedding ended the ménage à trois among Marthe, Bonnard and Renée Monchaty - the painter's model, muse and lover from 1918 onwards - who reacted by taking her own life. At the onset of the twentieth century, Bonnard practiced his own personal style, a "different modernism" beyond all "isms" beholding to French classicism, and never questioned the centrality of objectivity.

Yet he broke through the traditional barriers between genres and developed them further. He created unconventional still lifes that included human figures and animals. Landscapes depicting "wild nature" stood in contrast to vibrant Parisian cityscapes. In his representations of interiors he oscillated between intimate depictions of his wife at her toilette and views of their bourgeois dining room. The vitality of his often luminous palette soon set Bonnard off from the Impressionists. Turning away from their attempts to capture the fleeting moment, he represented the permanence and memorableness of things. With the aid of color composition, he lent his paintings an unusual sense of space as perceived by the human eye rather than the camera lens. In the end, he was concerned to convey the whole range of sensory impressions through color. If shortly after his death in the middle of the past century Bonnard was viewed as a representative of a superficial harmony and an "innocent" chronicler of haute bourgeois life, ever since the 1984 travelling exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (which was also on view at the Zurich Kunsthaus), he has figured as an artist who captured the profound disquiet of a society destined to vanish. By means of subtle aesthetic nuances, Bonnard delved beneath the ostensible harmony of the day. This is seen in his color dissonances, interpenetrating spaces, ambiguous locations and alogical figure placements.


In the exhibition, conceived as a "maison immaginaire de Bonnard," his paintings are grouped in association with certain spaces that provided his favorite motifs: "La rue," "La salle à manger," "Intimité", "Le miroir," "Le passage entre intérieur et extérieur," and "Le grand jardin." The exhibition opens with the room "La rue." Bonnard painted Parisian street scenes especially in his early phase. He repeatedly chose a busy traffic intersection in northwestern Paris not far from his studio, as evidenced by two outstanding paintings of the same title - Place Clichy (1906-07 and 1912) - from a private collection and the Musée national d'Art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris. The next room features depictions of Bonnard's "Salle à manger" with its very special atmosphere. This dining room offered him many opportunities to cast an often humorous eye on the bourgeois interior, as in the major painting Le Café (Coffee), 1915, from the Tate London and La Nappe blanche (The White Tablecloth), 1925, from the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal. The dining room still lifes mark a contrast with the intimate interiors of the bedrooms and bathrooms on view in the room "Intimité". The nude was one of Bonnard's favorite motifs.

The major examples on view here include L'Homme et la Femme (Man and Woman), 1900, from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Depicting the artist and his lover, Marthe, this early work marked a first transition point in Bonnard's oeuvre, possessing a very modern-looking naturalness with which he left the stark simplifications of the Nabi phase behind. Besides the other rooms in his house, Bonnard was particularly inspired by the bathroom, from 1908 focusing increasingly on the subject of a woman at her toilette. An outstanding example, on account of its condensed spatial structure, is Le Cabinet de toilette (The Bathroom), 1932, from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Bonnard's bathtub motifs are renowned. A full five works in this genre are on view: La Source (Nu dans la baignoire), (The Source (Nude in the Bathtub)), 1917, from a private collection; Baignoire (Le Bain), (The Bath,) 1925, from the Tate; Nu à la baignoire (Sortie du bain), (Nude by the Bathtub (Getting out of the Bath)), 1931, from the Musée national d'Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Nu dans le bain (Nu dans la baignoire), (Nude in the Bath), 1936-38, from the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and La Grande Baignoire (Nu), (The Large Bathtub (Nude)),1937-39, from a private collection. A further section comprises solely pictures with the mirror motif, which expands the pictorial space and simultaneously questions it. Here, in addition to Le Cabinet de toilette au canapé rose (Nu à contre-jour), (The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa (Nude in Contre-Jour)), 1908, from the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, we find two self-portraits made in front of the mirror in the artist's bedroom: Autoportrait (Le Boxeur), (Selfportrait (The Boxer)), 1931, from the Musée d'Orsay, and Portrait de l'artiste dans la glace du cabinet de toilette (Autoportrait), (Portrait of the Artist in the Bathroom Mirror (Self-Portrait)), 1939-45, from the Musée national d'Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.


Then comes a room devoted to the important relationship between interior and exterior space in Bonnard's art. Windows intrigued him throughout his career. His views through windows are always recognizable as such, the outside world being clearly perceived from an interior point of view. This leads to an integration of the environment in the interior realm, as seen to good effect in Fenêtre ouverte sur la Seine (Vernon), (Open Window towards the Seine (Vernon)), 1911-12, from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice, and Grande salle à manger sur le jardin, (Dining Room on the Garden), 1934-36, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The exhibition also includes a rather large number of garden depictions from all phases of the artist's career. After the turn of the century, nature advanced to become a key motif in Bonnard's visual repertoire. In his eyes the garden represented an order in which the human relationship to nature in general was reflected. In the early La Partie de croquet, (The Croquet Game), 1892, from the Musée d'Orsay, the landscape still serves as a foil for an ornamental harmony. In his later nature depictions Bonnard interlocked the landscape and garden with his house, as seen in the famous painting Le Jardin sauvage (La Grande Terrasse), (The Wild Garden (The Large Terrace)), 1918, from the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and Décor à Vernon (La Terrasse à Vernon), (The Terrace at Vernon), 1920/39, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The "Pierre Bonnard" exhibition continues the Fondation Beyeler tradition of devoting exhibitions to artists represented in our collection. Ernst Beyeler dealt in Bonnard works and in 1966 mounted a Bonnard show in his gallery. With Le Dessert, (The Dessert), 1940, the Beyeler Collection possesses one of the artist's major late still lifes.

During his fifty years as an art dealer Ernst Beyeler was constantly collecting art. In time, this required him to make provisions for the future of his pictures and sculptures. The most obvious solution would have been to bequest the works to the Kunstmuseum Basel. However, when the government of the canton Basel City put forward suggestions for a new home for the collection, it soon became apparent that none of these locations could do justice to the works of art. So the foundation was launched and with it came the idea of building a museum specifically to house the collection. Ernst Beyeler was excited by the vision of combining groups of works by major artists from the last hundred years with sculptures from Africa and Oceania in a compatible setting. However, this setting had yet to be created. Having been highly impressed by the work of Renzo Piano, who designed the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Menil Collection in Houston, he commissioned the acclaimed Italian architect without competition to design the new museum. The beautiful grounds of the Villa Berower estate, provided by the municipality of Riehen, offered ideal surroundings for a museum intended as a home for Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. The idea of creating an exciting synthesis of nature, daylight and art could not have met with more favourable conditions. There was something altogether painterly about the meadow parkland with its richly varied vegetation. Ernst Beyeler and Renzo Piano engaged in an extensive exchange of ideas throughout the entire process of planning and building the museum. From the outset Renzo Piano proposed building a museum tract that would consist of three sections integrated into the terrain in a series of steps. A section was added along the building’s eastern side – like the side deck of an aircraft carrier – which also screened the museum from the main road. To the west, an adjoining winter garden opens up a view of the countryside as it sweeps down towards the river Wiese at the foot of the Tüllinger Hill. Renzo Piano paid considerable attention to the design of the roof, seeking ways of allowing the changing phases of daylight to be experienced inside the galleries while abiding by conservation requirements. The building was designed to radiate simplicity while maintaining harmony with its setting. Ernst Beyeler’s wish that visitors should be able to experience the museum and its collection on a single floor without the need to climb stairs, and that a pond be created outside the south-facing façade, was fulfilled by sinking the entire complex to a lower level in the ground. This draws the museum into closer communion with the landscape as well as lending it a more intimate character. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch

LACMA Presents the First International Survey of Women Surrealists in Mexico & the USA

Written by Charles Naismith Friday, 27 January 2012 21:59

Los Angeles, California.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is proud to persent "In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States", on view at the museum from January 29th through May 6th. Co-organized by LACMA and the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) in Mexico City, "In Wonderland" is the first large-scale international survey of women surrealist artists in North America. Past surveys of surrealism have either largely excluded female artists or minimized their contributions. This landmark exhibition highlights the significant role of women surrealists who were active in these two countries, and the effects of geography and gender on the movement.

Spanning more than four decades, "In Wonderland" features approximately 175 works by forty-seven extraordinary artists, including Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Louise Bourgeois, and more. Surrealism called for the destruction of bourgeois culture and traditional standards and advocated intellectual and political liberty. When promoted in North America, these ideals flourished especially among the supposedly “second sex.”In standard studies on surrealism, female artists have been cast primarily as mistresses, wives, or muses—the inspiration for the male fetishized subject matter. This exhibition however explores the legacy of the movement in the United States and Mexico through its influence on several generations of women artists. Unlike their male counterparts, these artists delved into the unconscious as a means of self-exploration that enhanced an often haunting self-knowledge in their quest to exorcise personal demons. For women surrealists—whether natives by birth, émigrés, or temporary visitors—North America offered the opportunity for reinvention and individual expression, a place where they could attain their full potential and independence. "In Wonderland" illuminates the work of a diverse group of artists—both well-recognized and lesser known—who were active during a period that witnessed both the internationalizing of surrealism and the professionalizing of women in the visual arts in urban centers such as Mexico City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

The survey presents an extensive range of work, including paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photographs, and film. The works date primarily from about 1930 (the period when Lee Miller and Rosa Rolanda first experimented with surrealist photograph techniques) to 1968 (the year that Yayoi Kusama, working in New York City, presented one of her landmark happenings, “Alice in Wonderland,” in Central Park). A selection of later works is also included to illustrate surrealism’s historical overlap and influence on the feminist movement. "In Wonderland" is organized according to nine major themes that demonstrate recurrent issues in the women’s lives and art: Identity; The Body and Fetishes; The Creative Woman; Romance and Domesticity; Games and Technical Innovations; North America: The Land, Native People, and Myths; Politics, Depression and the War; Abstraction; and Feminism. Most prominent in the show are portraits and self-referential images, ranging from bluntly honest to disturbing, that reveal unresolved issues haunting the artists. Equally telling are the many double, couple, and group portraits, and narrative fables that exemplify the women’s friendships, loves, and families, and convey the difficulties and dramas often involved in such relationships. For instance, the portrayal of love and marriage ranges from storybook romances by Sylvia Fein and Remedios Varo; cynical, somewhat eerie courtship scenes by Leonora Carrington and Gertrude Abercrombie; and an obsessive fascination for a lover (i.e., Diego Rivera) by Frida Kahlo. The struggle of motherhood and domesticity versus an artistic career is often cast in terms of houses, dolls or other toys in the works of Carrington, Ruth Bernhard, Louise Bourgeois, Gerri Gutmann, and Kati Horna.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection extending from ancient times to the present. A museum of international stature as well as a vital part of Southern California, LACMA shares its vast collections through exhibitions, public programs, and research facilities that attract nearly a million visitors annually. Among the museum’s special strengths are its holdings of Asian art, housed in part in the Bruce Goff-designed Pavilion for Japanese Art; Latin American art, ranging from pre-Columbian masterpieces to works by leading modern and contemporary artists including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and José Clemente Orozco; and Islamic art, of which LACMA hosts one of the most significant collections in the world. LACMA has its roots in the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, established in 1910 in Exposition Park. In 1961, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a separate, art-focused institution.


In 1965, the fledgling institution opened to the public in its new Wilshire Boulevard location, with the permanent collection in the Ahmanson Building, special exhibitions in the Hammer Building, and the 600-seat Bing Theater for public programs. Over several decades, the campus and the collection have grown considerably. The Anderson Building (renamed the Art of the Americas building in 2007) opened in 1986 to house modern and contemporary art. In 1988, Bruce Goff's innovative Pavilion for Japanese Art opened at the east end of campus. In 1994, the museum acquired the May Company department store building at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, now known as LACMA West. Most recently, the Transformation project revitalized the western half of the campus with a collection of buildings designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. These include the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a three-story 60,000 square foot space for the exhibition of postwar art that opened in 2008. In fall of 2010, the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built, naturally lit, open-plan museum space in the world, with a rotating selection of major exhibitions. Ray's restaurant and Stark Bar opened in 2011, invigorating the central BP Pavilion near Chris Burden's iconic Urban Light. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.lacma.org